Fibre Channel over the Ethernet (FCoE) is an emerging protocol that allows organizations to extend the reliability and network services of Fibre Channel (FC) to a broader range of server environments, such as a new Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) infrastructure designed to consolidate multiple transport layers on a single physical interconnect, thereby reducing the cost and complexity of implementing a virtualized data center. In other words, FCoE enables the transport of existing Fibre Channel protocols over the CEE network. Specifically, FCoE encapsulates an FC frame in a manner similar to how an IP packet is included in an Ethernet packet, and inserts a defined frame header before the FCoE frame containing the FC frame is sent over the CEE link. FCoE also decapsulates an FC frame from a received FCoE frame so that the same FC operations can be performed over the CEE network without modifications to existing FC protocols. An FCoE switch is a device that exposes CEE and FC ports. Similar to a basic FC switch, the FCoE switch makes forwarding decisions based on the FC header of an FC frame encapsulated inside the FCoE frame, except that the FCoE switch supports communications between any ports on the switch, including an FCoE initiator talking to a FCoE target, an FC initiator to an FC target, and an FCoE initiator talking to an FC target.
Currently the FCoE standard is under development after several versions including the most recent one, FC-BB-5, rev. 2.00 as of June 2009, the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety for all purposes. None of the existing or proposed FCoE standards provides a method for the VN_Port in one FCoE device to acquire the Ethernet MAC address of the VN_Port in another FCoE device so as to enable direct communications between FCoE devices. Instead, the present FCoE standard and technologies implementing the standard require an FCoE switching element, i.e., FCF (FCoE Forwarder), to transit traffic from an FCoE initiator to an FCoE target. Although certain alternatives have been proposed to enable direct communications between FCoE devices, most are not feasible in terms of technical difficulty or implementation cost. For example, one solution proposes to add a new object for storing the Ethernet address of an FCoE VN_Port to a network directory (e.g., the Name Server under the FC protocols), which, however, would not only cause a major change to the existing FCoE standards, but also require all vendors to update the name servers in order to support the new object. Therefore, a need exists to provide direct communications between FCoE devices without burdensome requirements on existing FCoE standards and product vendors.